Astronauts Left Earth in 1972?!
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sonofbeach-sheet — 9 years ago(July 12, 2016 08:01 PM)
Yeah, but setting the movie more like at least a good 50 years in the future would have been more plausible. 2001 and Interstellar are quite a bit more accurate for space travel.
That spaceship looked like it took only a few days to construct. -
JamesA-1102 — 9 years ago(July 13, 2016 05:21 AM)
The filmmakers wanted a contemporary hero for the audience to identify with. At the time the astronauts were the biggest heroes in the country. They wanted to capitalize on that. Yes it would have made more sense to put it 50 years in the future but that may not have had the same impact.
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joekiddlouischama — 9 years ago(July 24, 2016 09:57 PM)
The filmmakers wanted a contemporary hero for the audience to identify with. At the time the astronauts were the biggest heroes in the country. They wanted to capitalize on that. Yes it would have made more sense to put it 50 years in the future but that may not have had the same impact.
right. One hears the lines (I may be paraphrasing slightly), "Never trust the older generation," "Never trust anyone over thirty," and "Where I come from, only kids like you have beards." These cultural references 'date' the film, but they also substantiate it as a historical artifact in its own right.
The irony about that second line is that it reveals that circa 1967 (when the filmmakers shot
Planet of the Apes
), beards were still taboo among male Hollywood stars in film unless the narrative (like a long science fiction adventure that precluded shaving) called for them. Clint Eastwood had worn beards in his three Westerns with Italian director Sergio Leone from 1964-1966 (those films emerged in the US in 1967 and 1968), but those iconic and epochal movies were made outside the Hollywood industry. (The first two were made and released in Italy and continental Europe without a cent of Hollywood capital.) As Eastwood has said, Hollywoodwhile intriguedstill viewed him dubiously circa late 1966 and early 1967, after he had returned from making the third Western. And in his first four Hollywood vehicles, all shot in 1967-1968, Eastwood indeed lacked any facial hair.
If
Planet of the Apes
had been filmed two or three years later, or certainly five or six years later, I wonder if the filmmakers would have had Heston's character shave that beard. -
HowYaLikeDemApplesWill — 9 years ago(July 13, 2016 01:40 PM)
The late 60s/early 70s was a hotbed of these dystopian, gloom and doom future movies (Omega Man, Soylent Green, Silent Running, Logan's Run, etc)
The year they left to go 2000 years into the future, was fairly inconsequential to the overall plot, which was really an allegory of the race relations and nuclear arms controversies, which were
current
to the time of filming.
Whose idea was it for the word "Lisp" to have an "S" in it? -
roland-rockerfella — 9 years ago(November 25, 2016 11:50 AM)
I guess back in the late 60's anything seemed possible when it came to space flight. They had no idea we would spend the next 50 years sitting on our ass doing nothing about sending people to other worlds.
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roland-rockerfella — 9 years ago(November 26, 2016 12:10 PM)
That's hardly the same thing. The world will stand still and everyone will watch when ( or if ) man ever returns to the moon or to Mars. A probe landing on another world interests only scientists and a few avid followers ( I admit I'm one of them ). But the general public doesn't care that much.
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roland-rockerfella — 9 years ago(November 26, 2016 05:16 PM)
That's not as silly as it sounds. Once space travel and exploitation becomes profitable and relatively safe then you will se a new gold rush emerge. Once their is money to be made there will be no stopping companies and rich individuals from selling their wares. Unfortunately because space travel is still so hideously expensive and dangerous than only major nation states can play the game, at least for now.